It’s often a fool’s errand to assign motivation to unexplained bird behaviors so in this case I won’t make any claims. But I have to wonder if this young owl might have been experimenting with its eyesight.
Little quirks in bird behavior often pique my curiosity even though I know there’ll likely never be a definitive explanation for them.
I literally have such a big head that they had to special-order a cap large enough to fit me when I graduated from high school (true story). But I have nothing on the male Common Goldeneye.
Occasionally the frozen moments in my photographs allow me to see something that really piques my curiosity. And makes me wonder about the relationships between natural selection, behaviors and structural adaptations.
The huge, goofy-looking feet of coots aren’t made to run on anything, least of all extremely slick ice.
We spotted a far off Long-billed Curlew in flight with something large in its bill.
I see hybrid wild ducks fairly often in the field but a hybrid Canada Goose was a new experience for me.
This might be the most spectacular and unique raptor I’ve ever photographed or even seen. In fact there’s no “might be” about it – without qualification, it is. And I even got some pretty decent photos of it in flight.
Over the years I’ve documented a variety of birds with severely deformed beaks including the two examples below. Now we may know the cause of the condition.
It’s hard enough to get a single sharp shot of a landing raptor but nine days ago I captured an entire series of them near Montana’s Centennial Valley.
Apologies for posting the same species two days in a row but yesterday I got a grebe twofer – an optical illusion and a behavior I’d never seen before.
